Ontario’s top public health official says that he would not be surprised to see the province report more than 2,000 new cases of COVID-19 in a single 24-hour period this week, a development that he says would be “concerning” especially as we head into the holiday season.

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams made the comment during a briefing on Monday afternoon, just hours, after the Ministry of Health reported 1,940 more cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

The number was a jump from the 1,677 new cases reported on Sunday but up only slightly from the 1,925 confirmed last Monday.

“With those numbers, the record amount of testing over the weekend and the amount of positivity from the testing that is sort of in the cue coming up it would not surprise me if we went over 2,000 cases in a day which we have not breached so far. We might see that early this week. So that is concerning,” Williams said.

The rolling seven-day average of new infections is now 1,841, up from 1,820 last Monday but down from the record 1,874 reported on Saturday.

More than 57,000 tests were completed over the past 24 hours and the province says today’s test positivity rate is 4.6 per cent, up from four per cent last week.

Of the new cases reported today, 544 are in Toronto, 390 are in Peel Region, 191 are in York Region, 114 are in Windsor, and 134 are in Hamilton.

An additional 23 deaths were confirmed yesterday, including 11 residents of long-term care homes in the province.

“We would have liked to have been at the top of the second wave and coming down (at this point) but we are still hanging in there at this plateau at the top. S you might say at least we are not going up to 5,000 or 6,000 but that is not much consolation," Williams said. "We want to see that number start to come down steadily down the other side and we have a long way to go.”

150 active outbreaks in long-term care facilities

Seven more outbreaks were confirmed in Ontario long-term care homes today, bringing the total number of active outbreaks in those facilities to 150, up from 118 at this point last week.

According to the province's latest epidemiologic summary, there are 79 new cases of COVID-19 among residents of Ontario's long-term care homes and 15 among staff. The total number of long-term care residents who have died in the province after becoming infected with COVID-19 is now 2,490.

The number of virus-related hospitalizations and intensive care patients also continues to climb. There are now 857 patients with COVID-19 receiving care in Ontario hospitals with 244 in intensive care units (ICU). Last Monday, the province was reporting 725 COVID-19 related hospitalizations and 213 ICU patients.

Another 1,535 infections are considered to be resolved today and the number of active cases in the province is now 16,586, up from 16,034 last week.

On Monday, the first shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in Ontario and the province confirmed that the first doses of the vaccine will be administered today.

Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Abdu Sharkawy said the vaccine has offered a “great boost to everyone’s morale.”

“We are very excited obviously. The vaccine certainly can't come soon enough... It's giving us a tangible sense of hope that we can see this pandemic at some point coming to an end. I think we are also very guarded about this enthusiasm,” he said.

“We want to be careful not to let our guard down and remember that it is going to be important to maintain all of our public health measures in terms of masking and distancing and limiting contacts... the vaccine is an insurance policy, it is not a cure-all, so we are going to have to be very disciplined and very patient for some time to come.”

New cases in the GTHA:

Toronto: 544

Peel Region: 390

York Region: 191

Durham Region: 68

Halton Region: 64

Hamilton: 134